Senior Correspondent Megan Kate Nelson is a historian, writer, cultural critic, and blogger. Based in Lincoln, Massachusetts, she has written for the New York Times Disunion blog, JSTOR Daily, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Civil War Times. She earned her BA in History and Literature from Harvard University and her PhD in American Studies from the University of Iowa. She has taught at Texas Tech University, Cal State Fullerton, Harvard, and Brown. She is the author of two books, Ruin Nation: Destruction and the American Civil War (University of Georgia Press, 2012) and Trembling Earth: A Cultural History of the Okefenokee Swamp (University of Georgia Press, 2009). And she’s working on a third book about the Civil War in the US West. You can follow Megan on Twitter @megankatenelson and read her insightful essays at Historista.com, a blog that examines the surprising, cool, and weird ways that people engage with history in everyday life.